Supporting advanced scholarship on ancient arts and cultures
The Getty Scholars Program at the Villa contributes to the understanding and preservation of cultural heritage through advanced research on the arts and cultures of antiquity. While in residence, Scholars spend significant time at one of the world’s leading art collections, engaging with an international community of curators, conservators, and visiting colleagues committed to intellectual exploration and exchange. Villa Scholars work at the Getty Villa near Malibu, the site of the Getty Museum’s collection of Greek, Etruscan, and Roman art, the antiquities conservation labs, and a reference library dedicated to the ancient Mediterranean world.
The Classical World in Context: Glocalization
Over the arc of the first millennium BCE, the Mediterranean became the stage for an era of sustained global interaction, linking the Levant, North Africa, central Europe, Iberia, and far beyond. Novel technologies, advanced engineering, and the spread of writing and coinage underpinned dynamic economic expansion. Population movements of migrants, merchants, and mercenaries amplified social transformation at an unprecedented pace and reach.
“Glocalization” entails the processes through which such global influences were reconfigured to serve local traditions and identities. Phoenician and Greek traders, who first circumnavigated the Mediterranean Sea, anticipated the rise of Carthage’s mercantile monopolies and ultimately Rome’s imperial expansion. Glocal perspectives foreground the mutual co-creation between these dominant powers and diverse regional societies in which communities and individuals selectively manipulated outside commodities and ideas in the service of new artistic and cultural practices. Innovation and change took root at the crossroads of contact, in multicultural port cities, frontier zones, and religious precincts. At the Getty Villa, scholars will explore the capacity of a glocal lens to reveal nuanced historical contexts that reshaped the Mediterranean world.
The Getty Scholars Program at the Villa focuses on the Classical World in Context, a multi-year initiative to explore the interconnectivity between the ancient Mediterranean region and the cultures of Eurasia and Africa. Priority will be given to research projects that apply interdisciplinary, comparative, transregional, and diachronic approaches to art, material culture, literature, and other sources for the study of antiquity.
The deadline for submission of applications for the 2027-28 Residential Fellowships is October 1, 2026.
Further information: https://www.getty.edu/projects/villa-scholars-program/